Marisacat

Let’s all faint! 23 June 2010

U.S. Central Commander Gen. David Petraeus
FILE – In this June 15, 2010 file photo, U.S. Central Commander Gen. David Petraeus is surrounded by staff after appearing to pass out on Capitol Hillin Washington, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. President Barack Obama has named Gen. Petraeus to succeed Gen. Stanley McChrystal as top war commander in Afghanistan (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Somewhere in the Rose Garden comments Ob said we are going to succeed.

There was a piece at People mag a coupel of days ago, about how people dread his lecturing or discussing climate issues with them… he goes on. And on. And on. And then some more. :lol: Not the best salesman.

oh that si right… what a scene that was, at the Republican convention.

Just reading this at LAT… one thing about this story, pundits had to wing it early am Tuesday… it was clear, little prepping had gone out to them. AND Obby + whoever did manage to keep the announce quiet til they hit the Rose Garden.

[B]y Monday, an advance copy of the article was in the hands of a press aide for President Obama, setting in motion a chain of events that culminated less than 48 hours later with McChrystal’s ouster and Obama seeking to reassert control over a military leadership that appeared disdainful of civilian authorities.

The article caught the White House wholly unprepared. “There was no forewarning,” a senior administration official said in an interview. “It was like, ‘Holy —-!’ ”

Vice President Joe Biden was flying home from Chicago aboard Air Force Two on Monday when McChrystal called to apologize. But Biden didn’t know what the general was talking about — he had no inkling that the article existed. …

I wonder if Ob “got it”, for all his whining about the media, real undercutting is much closer to home.

And so the wars go on, one chest full of medals walks in, one walks out.

WASHINGTON — Senator Obama, the Democrat from Illinois seeking his party’s nomination for the presidency, is giving the Iraq progress report of General David Petraeus low marks, going so far as to claim the one clear success in Iraq in recent months — the rout of Al Qaeda in Anbar — has nothing to do with the military surge the general in Washington is defending.

“I’m not sure that the success in Anbar has anything to do with the surge,” Mr. Obama said today at the first of two hearings featuring General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. “You yourself said it was political.”

And while delegates at the World National Oil Companies Congress in London this week argue that they must be allowed to continue deepwater drilling despite the risks because land and shallow-water oil supplies are running out, BP is further destroying what little public support they have left, – other than from those Republicans and judges who own shares in oil production – by obstructing private citizens with small boats from doing their best to rescue sea turtles. BP is using shrimp boats to corral the spill into enclosed areas with fire-resistant booms, then setting it on fire to burn off the oil, not only killing hundreds if not thousands of sea turtles by boiling them alive, but destroying incalculable numbers of crabs, slugs, and surface fish that live in the Gulf of Mexico’s sargassum seas, crucial habitats for turtles, birds and larger fish.

Yet rather than aid volunteers and scientists battling to save the sargassum wildlife, BP is aggressively hindering any rescue efforts. ‘They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us back in there,’ one of the rescue boat captains, Mike Ellis, told conservation biologist Catherine Craig.

BP has good, if shocking, reason to want to kill these turtles. The Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle is on the Endangered Species Act list. Harming them is punishable by prison sentences and fines of up to $25,000 per violation – per turtle. But rather than allow rescuers to collect injured turtles from the burn boxes before the containment fires are lit, BP is choosing to deliberately burn the animals alive, thus incinerating the damning evidence.

Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who has been part of the sea turtle rescue mission observed the destruction going on in the sargassum waters. ‘Ordinarily, the sargassum is a nice, golden colour,’ he said. ‘You shake it, and all kinds of life comes out: shrimp, crabs, worms, sea slugs. The place is really just bursting with life. It’s the base of the food chain.’ But now those areas are dying or already dead. ‘We’ll see flying fish, and they’ll land in this stuff and just get stuck.’ The sea jellies and snails that drift in these currents that form the major food sources for turtles have been almost totally exterminated. ‘These animals drift into the oil lines and it’s like flies on fly paper,’ Witherington said. ‘As far as I can tell, that whole fauna is just completely wiped out. Most of the Gulf of Mexico is a desert. Nothing out there to live on. It’s all concentrated in these oases.’

Farmers are slaughtering their livestock for food, after having eaten all the grain reserved for the animals. According to the UK Guardian:

In Niger, which the United Nations classifies as the world’s least developed country, starving families are eating flour mixed with wild leaves and boiled plants. More than 7 million people – almost half the population – currently face food insecurity in the country, making it the hardest hit by the crisis. According to UN agencies, 200,000 children need treatment for malnutrition in Niger alone.

This is interesting to read alongside the current cover story in Harper’s magazine, which is all about how investment banks managed to jack up the price of food on the commodities market over the past ten years. The problem here is twofold: West Africa is suffering drought and poor harvests, but at the same time investment banks have speculated to the point where food staples have gotten artificially expensive. Now starving people can’t buy imported foods even though they are available.

Brent Furer, an aide to Sen. David Vitter, resigned today over reports that, among other things, he’d knifed up his girlfriend good in 2008, sending her to the hospital. And he was the aide in charge of “women’s issues.” Ugh.

ABC News broke the story last night of the girlfriend attack, which Vitter’s office has known about since forever. But they still did not get him to resign until this morning, citing other drunk driving charges also revealed in the ABC News report as the impetus. So that makes it okay; he was a good worker when he was just cuttin’ up that one gal.

So.

At the age of 86, Noam Chomsky remains as active as ever in his work as a world-renowned political dissident and pioneering linguist. He has also opened a new chapter in his life, recently celebrating a one-year anniversary with his new wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, his second marriage. Chomsky discusses the joys of newfound love and why it is a "pri […]

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. "[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege," Chomsky says. "Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just b […]

Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

Britain has extradited a Vietnamese national to the United States to face charges that he aided and received military training in Yemen from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Justice…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that paved the way to a "nuclear nightmare," drawing a rebuke from President Barack Obama and exposing the depth of a U.S.-Israeli rift.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives approved full fiscal-year funding for the U.S. domestic security agency on Tuesday, dealing a blow to conservative Republicans who had wanted the bill to include language blocking President Barack Obama's recent executive orders on immigration.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified on Tuesday that deep budget cuts could force the Pentagon to put on hold several key weapons development programs, including efforts to build a next-generation fighter and a more efficient aircraft engine.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the chamber was moving toward debate on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.